A Third of World's Spam From One Russian Man

DaveNJ1987 writes "The FBI believes that one third of the world's spam messages are being generated by one 23-year-old Russian man. Oleg Nikolaenko of Moscow is being blamed for operating the Mega D botnet that sent spam emails from over 500,000 infected computers."

Comments

somebody should kill the bastard

[FudRucker]

put a bullet or two in his head, preferably from a large caliber pistol, semi jacketed hollow point

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[captainpanic]

Apologies for stereotyping... but you must be American...

Civilized countries arrest someone, then try him. People are not guilty until proven guilty... and you certainly won't get shot until proven guilty.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Krau Ming]

that's too quick (obviously). i'm thinking coliseum full of people, him with a dull sword, and some hungry tigers.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[devbox]

Yes, lets forget about laws and giving sentences that are in line with the crime. No matter how you want to spin it, spamming clearly isn't as big crime as rape, violence or killing someone.

In fact, screw sentences and court. Let's just kill anyone that breaks laws.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[oranGoo]

If your geo-socio stereotyping is correct, he actually might have much higher chance of getting shot then average citizen of the world.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[ByOhTek]

Wow... that stereotype makes about as much sense as a stereotype saying black people have teeth.

Yep, it's true, but it doesn't really distinguish them from any other ethnicity.

Way to be a bigoted dumbass my friend.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Haedrian]

Naah, that's too uncivilised.

Force him to read spam emails for the rest of his life.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[ByOhTek]

That'd be too quick. maybe every few minutes, add some starving weasels.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the type that want to solve everything with a bullet. Think of his family, even if him is an asshole, he deserves a trial. Also if you put him down who is gonna deactivate the botnet?. You also may suggest hollow point bullets for every infected PC and its owner.
Take him down, and ten more will appear. The spam only exists because there are people willing to pay for sending it, as long as there is no punishment for the clients, this thing will get happening over and over.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[commodore64_love]

I don't understand why people hate Email Ads so much.
All you have to do is filter them out.
It's not worth killing someone.

Now the head of the RIAA or MPAA - that's a different story. They are extortionists ("Pay $5000 or else we'll ruin you life"), and deserve to die.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Chrisq]

Yes, lets forget about laws and giving sentences that are in line with the crime. No matter how you want to spin it, spamming clearly isn't as big crime as rape, violence or killing someone.

Yes but it might be 1/500,000 as bad - justifying the same sentence.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Chrisq]

Apologies for stereotyping... but you must be American...

Civilized countries arrest someone, then try him. People are not guilty until proven guilty... and you certainly won't get shot until proven guilty.

I would say " ... and you certainly won't get shot deliberately until proven guilty. People certainly have been shot before being proven guilty.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

Apologies for stereotyping... but you must be an idiot...

Americans might say how they feel. That rarely translates into actions.

Ever hear that old saw "actions speak louder than words"?

Despite our rather tarnished reputation -- a gift from another idiot -- we too start by arresting people and trying them in a court of law. Some people even think we invented that. Certainly our track record is (usually) a lot better than what you can expect in lots of other places in the world.

Now go back under your bridge...

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[John Hasler]

> Apologies for stereotyping...

Apology not accepted.

> ...but you must be American...

Like the Canadian advisor to the PM who recently called for the murder of Julian Assange? Or the British police who attack Brazilian tourists in the subway and shoot them in the head?

> Civilized countries arrest someone, then try him.

And, not coincidentally, he has been arrested in the USA and will be tried.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck'n A bubba! Wait, you were joking? damn....

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[HaZardman27]

Apparently America is not a "civilized" country because its citizens are free to use humor as they see fit. I sincerely doubt the GP would actually shoot this man, but it's Friday morning and many would like to start their morning with humor.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

as a stereotype saying black people have teeth

Wait... they DO?! Shit.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[John Hasler]

> ... and you certainly won't get shot deliberately ...

Sounds pretty deliberate to me (self defense is still deliberate, even if that's what it was).

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[bsDaemon]

Email, on the server-side, is an io-bound process. That is, disk usage is a concern every bit as much as memory and bandwidth. I've seen spam kick loads on servers that would be running ~2-5 up to around a 15. Dropping the spammer in the firewall brought the load down almost immediately. I then had to remove all the mail they were pushing to us from the queue so I could force-deliver the legitimate mail, as the queue had become severely backed up, and mails that should have gone through right away had been backed up for several hours. The server had been in critical for CPU for several hours in nagios before I came in and fixed it because the people on the previous shift hadn't thought to check the mail queue, despite the fact the mail queue was also in critical on that server.

Spam is a plague like no other. It's a vector for phishing and infection and causes verifiable harm in and of itself.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[John Hasler]

> I don't understand why people hate Email Ads so much.

They constitute more than 99% of email traffic.

> All you have to do is filter them out.

It is impossible to reliably filter them all without losing real mail.

> It's not worth killing someone.

Correct.

> Now the head of the RIAA or MPAA - that's a different story.

No it isn't.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[aardwolf64]

You're right... we should just slap him in the face. Once for every spam message sent out from his servers, which would be 1/3 the spam sent out for the last decade or so.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you and disagree with your parent post. That's why I shot him.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[timeOday]

Executing, no. But are there any other nations arresting/kidnapping people from various countries and shipping them to secret prisons around the globe for indefinite incarceration and torture without ever standing trial? It's not a rhetorical question. I can't think of any other nations that do that.

There are also a outcry from surprisingly mainstream figures in the US for the summary murder of Julian Assange. I can't think of any people from other countries who talk that way about US citizens, other than people we call terrorists. So, I'm curious why you say it's universal. Again, not a rhetorical question, what I'm asking for is a example or two of where else this is happening.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Yvan256]

How about one hit with a spoon for every spam sent?

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[jolyonr]

You should be shot for that comment!

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[sco08y]

Apparently America is not a "civilized" country because its citizens are free to use humor as they see fit. I sincerely doubt the GP would actually shoot this man, but it's Friday morning and many would like to start their morning with humor.

In its haste to bring about world peace, it seems the UN forgot to include humor in its declaration of human rights. We'll have to ask Libya and Sudan at the next meeting of the Human Rights Commission if they'll approve adding it.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they have teeth. Down There. My pappy tol' me so when I was 12.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[thousandinone]

Vagina Dentata! What a terrible phrase...
Vagina Dentata! It'll make you crazed...

It means fuckin teeth, when you're going to get laid...

Oh thank God for thee,
Pornography...

Vagina Dentata!

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[camperslo]

Since his spamming goes beyond national boundaries, even extending to satellite net links that reach into space, this may fall under Cardassian jurisdiction.

"In Cardassian criminal trials the defendant is presumed guilty and in fact the punishment is already decided before the trial begins; the purpose of the trial (effectively a show trial) is merely to help the defendant acknowledge his wrongdoing. In Cardassian mystery novels, everyone is always guilty, the puzzle being to work out who is guilty of what. In Cardassian mythology the Galor deity was a helmeted, warrior demigod of antiquity. Tribute is paid to the vessel class of the same name as well as the likeness seen in the national symbol."

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Cardassian

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[jolyonr]

>somebody should kill the bastard

Let me help fix the article for your benefit:

"The FBI believes that one third of the world's spam messages are being generated by one 23-year-old Russian man. Oleg Nikolaenko, also known by his alias Julian Assange, is being blamed for operating the Mega D botnet that sent spam emails from over 500,000 infected computers."

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[bluie-]

underrated!

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[aclarke]

Like the Canadian advisor to the PM who recently called for the murder of Julian Assange?

You mean, like the FORMER advisor to the Prime Minister? If you're going to state "facts", get them straight: http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/12/01/flanagan-wikileaks-assange.html. Here we have a guy, who has an opinion. BFD. He doesn't reflect the Canadian government's opinion in any way; he's a guy who said something on TV.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[ByOhTek]

Of course other countries do that, they just do a better job at keeping it secret. Just because you don't know of a case where that happens, doesn't mean there isn't one.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Tom]

Yes, lets forget about laws and giving sentences that are in line with the crime. No matter how you want to spin it, spamming clearly isn't as big crime as rape, violence or killing someone.

Number of offenses counts for something, you know? Raping ten women does and should yield you a higher sentence then raping one.

So while each individual crime is tiny, do sum it up. So, for all I care, give him one second of jailtime for every spam message he sent. That'd get him put away for a couple hundred years.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[khallow]

And civilized countries will be the first to go when the zombie apocalypse hits. People who ruin other peoples' jokes on Slashdot should be shot.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

Keeping up with the Kardashians was an instant hit for E! - in its first month on the air it became the highest-rated series on Sunday nights among women aged 18 to 34 and was also seen by 1.3 million total viewers. The second season continued the success and was viewed by 1.6 million viewers - a 23% increase from the first season.

The fourth season's premiere, The Wedding, became the highest rated episode in the series history with nearly 3.2 million viewers and also brought in the highest rating in the women 18-34 demographic E! had ever had. The second episode of the season topped the success of the premiere and became the new highest rated episode in the series with 4.1 million viewers. This record was then broken for a third time by the season finale with 4.8 million viewers - which also made the episode the most watched broadcast ever in E!'s history.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[digitalsushi]

Nope, it's not. Find someone who would rather be raped to deleting 500,000 messages from their inbox.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Low Ranked Craig]

Maybe not shot, but you might end up with polonium 212 in your omelet.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Opportunist]

I would not kill the head of the RIAA or MPAA. Not because it is "inhumane". But because it does not solve anything.

If you want to deal with them, shut them down. Kill the organization. These organizations do not fall just because you kill the head. The head is replaceable, just like everything else. That's why killing them is so hard. It is insanely hard to show that the organization and not just a person within committed a crime. If everything fails, they'll find a sacrificial lamb. The bigger the crime, the bigger the lamb most likely, but it will not be anything that kills the organization. It just continues with another person in that place. Everyone can be replaced. Killing someone within the organization does not accomplish anything.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Foobar of Borg]

Yes, lets forget about laws and giving sentences that are in line with the crime. No matter how you want to spin it, spamming clearly isn't as big crime as rape, violence or killing someone. In fact, screw sentences and court. Let's just kill anyone that breaks laws.

Well, this is Russia we are talking about. I mean, if they can do it to journalists that question the government, certainly they could take out some basement dweller.

Or, if we really must follow the rule of law, then force him to make financial restitution for the 500k computers he has destroyed. He'll either kill himself or be destitute the rest of his pathetic life.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[somersault]

Can I delete them all in one go, or do I have to go through and pick them out? If it's the latter, I'd be tempted to go with rape.

Having said that, all the spam I get comes from marketing companies, and I find sales calls far more annoying. Even if the caller doesn't get through to me, reception still phones to ask if I want the call.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[RevWaldo]

Funny, I was about to suggest the feds should deputize the RIAA and make them the Spam Police. "Sure, we'll back you up on your infringement claims; we just got a little job we'd like you to take care of for us." (The enemy of my enemy is, well, not my friend, certainly, but it'd at least keep them out of our hair for awhile.)

.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Foobar of Borg]

Apologies for stereotyping... but you must be American...

Apologies for stereotyping, but you must be a douchebag.

Civilized countries arrest someone, then try him. People are not guilty until proven guilty... and you certainly won't get shot until proven guilty.

Tell that to Anna Politkovskaya.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[kaptink]

How about give him 1 minute of jail time for every spam email sent. That sounds pretty fair. Of course he would never see the light of day given that he has sent over 37 million spam equating to just over 70 years jail.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[timeOday]

I don't think it's fair to simply assume that. The Soviets never managed to keep it a secret when they were doing those kinds of things (granted it was on a vastly larger scale - at least as practiced in the nations they annexed - making it harder to conceal).

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Raenex]

The Soviets never managed to keep it a secret when they were doing those kinds of things

The Soviets just kill their vocal ex-patriots and reporters. The murderer is then elected to Parliament and granted immunity.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Sulphur]

Naah, that's too uncivilised.

Force him to read spam emails for the rest of his life.

Wasn't that a scene in Clockwork Orange?

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Geminii]

Just make him delete all the spam he sent.

From each inbox.

Manually.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[interval1066]

"Civilized countries arrest someone, then try him. People are not guilty until proven guilty..."

You mean like a 9/11 plotter? Given posh digs in a tropical paradise, allowed access to all forms of media; allowed to pray in the manner he is accustomed, eating exactly as his religion dictates. then tried in a civilian court where a civil judge will find him not guilty of 99% of his war crimes because he was slapped around a little? Yeah, we should do more of that. Europeans are so wise. We should be more like them. Friggin' idiots.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Kidbro]

No matter how you want to spin it, spamming clearly isn't as big crime as rape, violence or killing someone.

Not trying to put a monetary value on lives, or the trauma caused by rape, but some quick googling dug up the figure $9,000,000,000 per year. That's the cost of fighting spam in the US alone. So, this fellow is costing the US roughly three billion dollars per year. That's a lot of lives that could have been saved, or rapes that could have been prevented, had they been spent elsewhere.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[fifedrum]

no but I would drop him on....

<booming announcer voice>
Spammer Island! The new pay per view event in which notorious spammers, 419ers, and love life scammers are dropped, unarmed and naked onto a deserted island and given a 24 hour head start! They choose a strategy, build a defense perimeter, combine forces, hide?! Do they go it alone?! Watch as we drop angry systems administrators from around the globe into the action! There's Tim, master of the bayonette! There's Tubby Tom, he prefers the Katana. Last but not least there Big Jim, he likes baseball bats! Catch the exiting action on... Spammer Island!
<booming announcer voice>

I thought of this before running man.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[JoshuaZ]

Yes, spamming is a massive crime, akin to murder. This person is responsible for a third of the world's spam. How much time does a person waste per a month on dealing with spam? Let's say you waste 10 minutes (which is probably a lower estimate). That means you waste about 2 hours on spam a year. If we apply that estimate to just a few Americans (say 30 million of them) then that means in the course of one year this person has wasted 20 million hours of peoples time. There are around 9000 hours in a year. That means he's wasted about 2000 years worth of time. So in a year he's deprived from lives the same amount as if he killed thirty infants. Now, that's a ridiculous underestimate since there are a lot more internet users than just 30 million Americans. If we instead estimated using 300 million which is still an underestimate for the combined population of US and Europe that has regular internet access, that means he's doing the equivalent to killing 300 infants a year. Part of the problem here is that humans are really, really bad at appreciating scale. Killing an actual human being feels very different primarily because humans didn't evolve in a context where it was possible for someone to be evil by harming lots of people a tiny bit. But the point should be clear: By any rough metric this person is equivalent to a mass murderer.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's too kind. Lower him into a vat of acid, toes first, at a rate of 1 inch per hour, while he's forced to watch a live feed of his mother's ground up body being force-fed to his father.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

Find someone who has gone through 50,000 already to see where they stand on the issue. :)

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[commodore64_love]

Killing the head of the MAFIAA would not kill the organization but the replacement head, fearing for his life, would stop sending extortion letters to rape citizens' wallets. And if not Head #2, then shoot him and maybe Heads 3 or 4 will be smarter.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[kieran]

... one at a time?

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[wisdom_brewing]

But its providing people like you with work...

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[timeOday]

I agree the killing of Alexander Litvinenko was reprehensible, and roughly comparable to killing Bradley Manning overseas without trial if he were to escape the US.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[N1AK]

Firstly it's 500,000 computers, which send ~61,000,000,000 messages per day (Wikipedia: 183,000,000,000 spam emails a day). 706,019 emails per second.

It's pointless trying to compare crimes like assault to crimes like email spam. Murder is obviously a terrible crime, it deprives someone of a life and causes misery for many others. I don't think anyone wants to make out that it's negligible by comparison. Yet, pretending that sending 22,265,000,000,000 spam emails each year is nothing more than a trivial irritant is equally wrong. In terms of harm to society as a whole I would say the costs were considerably higher than a single murder.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, it's not. Find someone who would rather be raped to deleting 500,000 messages from their inbox.

That is not at all difficult. I presume you opted out of psych and soc classes when you got your computer science degree?

I know two girls who fit that description myself. Wish I could have the money I spent wining and dining them back, because I'm just not into that kind of action. They won't have any trouble finding a guy who is, though.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[onkelonkel]

Please Google "Broken Windows Fallacy"

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Hoi Polloi]

As someone once said (Kurt Tucholsky?) "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

9 billion? Bull. I really have to question some of the numbers people come up with. I would love to see how they came up with that unbelievable number. Probably a half-assed extrapolation.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[rainmouse]

No matter how you want to spin it, spamming clearly isn't as big crime as rape, violence or killing someone..

Yes agreed, lets consider a 1 second jail time for a spam offence. Now how many incidents of this 'crime' has he committed?

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Opportunist]

Not in this case. Because he doesn't have the full power in his hands. He often has no choice but to do what he has to do because the ones that fund him demand it.

You might get to the point where the head of the RIAA is some bum they picked up on the street and stuffed in a suit so he is a head you may cap if you so please while they continue business as usual.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

If this guy really is responsible for a third of the world's spam, then millions of people have had to spend five seconds deleting a message from him thousands of times each. A very conservative estimate might be that he has wasted 3 billion seconds of others people's time on deleting spam, nearly 100 years. I might prefer being raped to spending the next hundred years deleting spam.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Hoi Polloi]

The mafia killed each other all the time and I don't recall them ever shutting down or changing their methods because of this.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[tendrousbeastie]

Yes, they'd change their tactics under such circumstances. But not necessarily for the better.

If such things happened how do you think law enforcement and government would change their policy on p2p and the internet in general?

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[nabsltd]

So, this fellow is costing the US roughly three billion dollars per year. That's a lot of lives that could have been saved, or rapes that could have been prevented, had they been spent elsewhere.

Based on the most recent US statistics I could find, that money would allow you to hire enough police officers at $200K/year salary so that each of them would be responsible for 20 rape investigations per year...and nothing else. That certainly should help.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[ozbird]

In mafia state Russia, spammer kills you!

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[maxume]

It's still good for the glazier.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Infernal Device]

Sentence him according to the economic damage he's caused.

Then force him to repay it.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

But he doesn't have servers. He has a fleet of zombies.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, are you serious? If I show up at your door with a gun with the goal of murdering you, you have no choice but to deal with the situation. If an email shows up in your inbox, you are in no way obligated to pay attention to it. Access to email is your choice, just like watching TV means watching ads. Maybe you should go after the big fish make the case that every major broadcaster is a genocidal maniac for subjecting millions of viewers to advertisements?

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[bsDaemon]

Except that's not my job anymore, and fighting spammers and dealing with blacklists for several hours a day isn't interesting, fun or particularly productive.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[KhabaLox]

Yes, spamming is a massive crime, akin to murder.

I know you got modded up to +4 Insightful, but I'm going to call bullshit.

Killing an actual human being feels very different primarily because humans didn't evolve in a context where it was possible for someone to be evil by harming lots of people a tiny bit. But the point should be clear: By any rough metric this person is equivalent to a mass murderer.

The problem is, you can't equate 1 year of lost time for 75 people to 75 years (read: one lifetime) of lost time for one person. Sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Basically you are trying to put a dollar value on human life by equating it to lost time, which is hard enough to value in and of itself (I make $x/hour, but that doesn't mean I'll give up my 6-10pm time slot on Friday night for $4X). I don't think you can put a dollar value on life from a moral standpoint, even though we do it in law all the time.

Think about it this way: from your way of looking at it, executing a single prisoner is equivalent to locking up tens or scores of prisoners for a finite period of time. "Hey, in both cases we deprived society of X man-hours of productivity/life." Umm.... no.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[KhabaLox]

what I'm asking for is a example or two of where else this is happening.

How about Russia?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia

Of course, there's no proof that the Russian government was involved, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[digitalsushi]

You'd pull the trigger if it got the world the time back?

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[digitalsushi]

And Ryan Seacrest dramatically pausing before announcing the winner of American Idol has murdered dozens of little girls. SICK!

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[200_success]

If he sent 2.5 x 10^9 spams, and each took one second for the receiver to delete, that would be 75 person-years of time wasted, or approximately one human lifetime.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

Slow-motion execution race. Put him in an arena. Chase him with slow-moving steamrollers. Take bets how long he lasts.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Sparr0]

At a small non-tech company with about a hundred computers and users, I was the whole IT department. I would say that I probably spent 2-4 hours per week dealing with spam. That included tweaking our spam filters, maintaining SPF entries and monitoring third party blacklists for our domains, helping users mitigate spam that reached their inbox, tracking down false positives, etc.
If my experience was typical, then for 100M working adults with computers in America, there are 1M people like me spending 2-4M hours per week on the problem. Let's call that 150M hours per year, which, at even minimum wage, is $1.5B per year.
There, a half-assed extrapolation for you :)

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[haruchai]

Equally likely - he expressed the PRIVATE opinion of the Canadian government PUBLICLY. After all, in his position he, very likely, knew the truth.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Sparr0]

But you can equate the cost of fighting/avoiding the spam with the cost of preventing the loss of some number of other lives.
If you take the $3B that this man cost America this year and spend it on police and/or hospitals, you would certainly save a significant number of lives.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd pull the trigger if it got the world the time back?

Not necessarily, but I might support a government that would.

Assuming only one in 100 of these 61 billion daily spam messages get through, and it takes only a second to evaluate and delete the spam message, it would still take over 20,000 people working eight hours a day to delete all that email. At minimum wage that would cost 1.2 million U.S. dollars a day.

But of course the burden is spread across too many people to have a noticeable effect, right?

Suppose 20 million of them are elderly and have become so frustrated with spam-filled email that they've give up on it, and due to the increased sense of isolation can now be expected to die sooner.

Suppose thirty of them are doctors who are collaborating on the treatment that might have saved your brother's life, if spam (and spam filtering) hadn't caused so many delays due to miscommunications.

Suppose one of them is a 9-1-1 operator who, getting back late from her break, will slightly delay a response to your daughter's frantic emergency call.

Suppose all of them comprise a society that would be measurably more connected if spam were a third less obtrusive in their daily communications.

My government has sanctioned and financed significantly less justifiable acts than the trigger-pull you suggest.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[KhabaLox]

Except that the $3B spent wasn't spent by the government. Had that money not been spent by network operators and email admins they would have spent that money on other things, such has other IT capital, dividends got their stock holders, or new carpet for the office. The bottom line is that there is no moral or legal justification for the capital punishment of a spammer, much less the summary execution without due process.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[EMeta]

Somewhere your math went horribly, horribly wrong.

$3B / $200k = 15k officers. You're telling me that you found statistics saying that 15,000 officers can only handle 20 rape cases a year and nothing else?

I don't have a whole lot of confidence in our law enforcement industry, but I do have more than that.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[EMeta]

Why oh why did I comment in this thread before giving you mod-points?

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[hesaigo999ca]

In the way you have just presented this final point, then I can agree with you, because the spam cost 3 billion (over estimate here???) the 3 billion could have been better spent on hospitals and police, etc.

However, we both know that if you had an extra 3 billion in the coffers, that would disappear quickly with nothing to show for it, because politicians would never report that sum and would pocket the money some how through fake contracts etc....

If there could be a place to actually set up a bank account where left over budget money gets thrown into, and can not be touched except once every 10 years to go towards the national debt, then we would have no debt in 50 years....just from this alone, however, try telling this business model to the same politicians that declared we had an extra billion dollars from cut backs that we saved, and where is that money today (it disappeared)...

The analogy of time vs. life, and years etc...is awesome to show people not to take spam lightly, however, we still have to realize that spam is not something tangible
and can not lead you to actually die (except maybe from stress if you are an admin....)

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

And Ryan Seacrest dramatically pausing before announcing the winner of American Idol has murdered dozens of little girls. SICK!

That's what I think of American Idol too

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere your math went horribly, horribly wrong. $3B / $200k = 15k officers. You're telling me that you found statistics saying that 15,000 officers can only handle 20 rape cases a year and nothing else? I don't have a whole lot of confidence in our law enforcement industry, but I do have more than that.

Uh, he said "that money would allow you to hire enough police officers at $200K/year salary so that each of them would be responsible for 20 rape investigations per year".

EACH OFFICER would be responsible for 20 rape investigations per year. So 20 * 15k, or 300,000 cases per year total.

Somewhere your reading comprehension went horribly, horribly wrong. Jackass.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

"Somebody"? Why don't you shoot him?

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[Vastad]

I sincerely hope you remember to extract the botnet details/logins/addresses and the passwords for his own computers from him or at the very least get him to send out the kill code before you finish him.

Re:somebody should kill the bastard

[hasdikarlsam]

Once the expected future time cost of a spammer exceeds a human lifetime, it becomes possible to consider killing him.

This guy costs probably several hundred lifetimes a year.

Any questions?

Can I be first in line...

[cdoggyd]

...to punch him in the balls? PLEASE!

Hand me the lighter fluid...

[redemtionboy]

Who's ready for a good old fashioned lynching?

Re:Hand me the lighter fluid...

[grcumb]

Who's ready for a good old fashioned lynching?

You guys go ahead. We're a little busy right now, coercing data services here in the US to stop spreading the truth about our diplomatic corps.

Best,

The US Govt.

Re:Hand me the lighter fluid...

[LordLimecat]

I never heard precisely what truth that was. That we spy, like everyone else? General consensus seems to have been that the embassy wires were embarrassing, but not scandalous, and I havent heard that the gov't is trying to prevent people from reporting on it.

In fact, if anything, Ive heard how embarrassing it is that the gov't's response has been so timid.

Re:Hand me the lighter fluid...

[Opportunist]

Considering how the US conduct diplomacy, I think it's now spelled the "diplomatic corpse".

Re:Hand me the lighter fluid...

[mrops]

Why be so uncivilized when Russia showed us the polonium way.

Re:Hand me the lighter fluid...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ministry of Propaganda is back: one guy 1/3 of the World SPAM while the USA have a clear leader position:

http://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/countries.lasso

Yes, here too the USA are the world leaders -but they also provide the cure (at a cost) so they are the nice guys, right?

More Details and Background

[eldavojohn]

There's better coverage over at the Journal Sentinel of Milwaukee. Apparently the FBI agent tracking them is based out of there. Neat little story about how he got nabbed coming to Las Vegas for some big car show.

From the article cited in the summary:

The botnet sends out millions of spam messages ...

You're a few orders of magnitude off there. Try tens of billions ...

Re:More Details and Background

[Bromskloss]

From the article cited in the summary:

The botnet sends out millions of spam messages ...

You're a few orders of magnitude off there. Try tens of billions ...

I'd say it has the wrong dimension altogether. Is that the number of messages per second, per year, per Planck time?

Re:More Details and Background

[hedwards]

Planck time? That's a great suggestion. All we need is a suitable ship and we can make sure he gets some Planck time.

Re:More Details and Background

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard there was a good candidate for that here.

Re:More Details and Background

[Yvan256]

Maybe it's sending millions of spam messages per parsec?

Re:More Details and Background

[MillionthMonkey]

"I hereby sentence you to 10^-33 seconds."

In other news I noticed that one 10^-33-th of my spam is gone this morning.

Re:More Details and Background

[Neil Boekend]

one 10^-33-th = 1/(10^-33)=10^33
You lost 10^33 as much spam as you had? Interresting! All the spam must be gone, even the spam from the future and the past!

Re:More Details and Background

[djh2400]

Well, technically, if it's sends out tens of billions, it also sends out millions, too. :)

Re:More Details and Background

[Anonymous Coward]

And you complained that I let you fail calculus ??

Re:More Details and Background

[yuna49]

I found this paragraph from that article on the global reach of these activities quite illuminating:

The investigation took off after a seller of counterfeit Rolex watches in Kansas City told authorities he spent more than $2 million for spammers to help move his products. He directed them to a co-conspirator in Australia, who controlled a digital currency account with a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. Transaction records and e-mails finally pointed investigators to Nikolaenko in Russia.

Re:More Details and Background

[drainbramage]

Are you suggesting using Dihydrogen Monoxide Planck?
Cruel boy.

Re:More Details and Background

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just someone with an agenda saying this, 500k compromised servers is not that big, and most of those are already blocked, 1/3 ? Recheck your numbers

Re:More Details and Background

[Neil Boekend]

You didn't. I have never failed a calculus test in my life. Please enlighten me where I am wrong.
one third = 1/3
one fifth = 1/5

10^-1 = 0.1 = 1/(10^1)
10^-3 = 0.001 = 1/(10^3)

one 10^-33-th = 1/(10^-33) = 1/(1/(10^33)) = 10^33

Re:More Details and Background

[vandamme]

Planck time? That's a great suggestion. All we need is a suitable ship and we can make sure he gets some Planck time.

This oughta do. http://www.edisposals.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/Disposals-Public-Site/en_US/-/GBP/ViewProductDetail-Start;pgid=MieqQ4wkQg8000ArvQ_8K1sp0000giKn52gz?ProductUUID=38jAqBIQwVwAAAEsaApaBWLN&CatalogCategoryID=VaLAqBELPagAAAED8GeasfoP&JumpTo=OfferList

Wow

[Rik Sweeney]

The FBI believes that one third of the world's spam messages are being generated by one 23-year-old Russian man

Congratulations to Oleg Nikolaenko for achieving so much at such a young age!

Re:Wow

[Yvan256]

If he can keep going, maybe he'll be able to send 8/3 of the world's spam messages by the age of 30!

Re:Wow

[dangitman]

The FBI believes that one third of the world's spam messages are being generated by one 23-year-old Russian man

Congratulations to Oleg Nikolaenko for achieving so much at such a young age!

Unfortunately, the article is inaccurate. He's not a man yet, he's only 23.

Re:Wow

[Crudely_Indecent]

It may never happen. Once he gets to prison, he'll be someone's wife.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

And to think that by his age, Alexander had only conquered half the known world. And Nepoleon wept at his own ineptitude.

Re:Wow

[ProfessorKaos64]

Am I missing something here or did you mean 2/3? If not you must be a magician! 2 2/3 of the worlds spam is incredible!

Re:Wow

[Yvan256]

No I meant 8/3, there's so much spam that it can go over 100%.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI believes that one third of the world's spam messages are being generated by one 23-year-old Russian man

Congratulations to Oleg Nikolaenko for achieving so much at such a young age!

Unfortunately, the article is inaccurate. He's not a man yet, he's only 23.

Really? Ageism? Most people I know moved out of college and got a job "in the real world" by 23. I'm 24 now and I wouldn't consider myself a boy. If you meant this one particular 23 year old is "not a man" because of his actions and not because of his age alone, then perhaps you have a point.

Re:Wow

[KhabaLox]

Congratulations to Oleg Nikolaenko for achieving so much at such a young age!

Cue job offers from Zynga, Facebook, etc.

Re:Wow

[ProfessorKaos64]

How do you go over 100 percent spam? Thats mathmatically impossible. 100 percent is everything. You can multiply or modulate by higher percentages, such as 110% markup of a 50 dollar item, but the product itself cann be more than 100 percent or in this case 8/8. Idk... XD

Re:Wow

[dangitman]

Really? Ageism? Most people I know moved out of college and got a job "in the real world" by 23

That doesn't make one a man. Most 23 year olds haven't reached emotional or intellectual maturity.

Paradigm shift

[RogueRat]

Wow, a large scale internet operation that CAN'T be blamed on 4chan. Looks like they need to step up their game.

Re:Paradigm shift

[bughunter]

Well, the FBI doesn't say who the other two thirds comes from. 4Chan could /b/ doing just fine.

Fake Rolexes and Fake Zoloft

[digitaldc]

The botnet sends out millions of spam messages on behalf of scam artists selling fake prescriptions and Rolex watches.

Now we can identify the truly stupid people by their fake Rolex and their false sense of well-being.

Re:Fake Rolexes and Fake Zoloft

[dangitman]

Now we can identify the truly stupid people by their fake Rolex and their false sense of well-being.

It didn't say the Rolexes were fake, only the prescriptions.

Re:Fake Rolexes and Fake Zoloft

[Anonymous Coward]

The rolexes might have been fake, but the sense of well-being is probably quite real. Most anti-depressants are no better than a placebo.

Too Early?

[bughunter]

I looked at this summary over my first sip of coffee and read "A Third of World's Sperm From One Russian Man," and nearly spit it onto my macbook.

Titles like this should wait until after 10:00 am Eastern/7:00 am Pacific.

Re:Too Early?

[Ogive17]

Is it surprising a male (assumption) macbook user had sperm on the mind? ;)

(who needs karma anyway!)

Re:Too Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

My sleep deprived brains forgot the context of coffee sipping and focused on the word "sperm" and "nearly spitting it", hereby constructing a peculiar form of reality..

Re:Too Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, my initial read was - A Third of World's Spam (as in the meat in a can) From One Russian Man. I was wondering what kind of farm this guy had. :)

Re:Too Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also interesting: the need to point out that it was "my macbook" and not "my laptop" or "my keyboard".

Re:Too Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plane your girlfried in the morning before leaving the bed, then you do not need to think about sperm the remaning of the day

Re:Too Early?

[bughunter]

Similarly, have an egg or a pancake before replying, and you need not concern yourself with planing fried girls.

(I prefer to plane my girls baked, for the record...)

Re:Too Early?

[elysiana]

That's okay, I must be a sick puppy because my first thought was "Man, there really ISN'T much real meat in Spam, is there?"

Re:Too Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Tits like this should wait until after 10:00 am Eastern/7:00 am Pacific."

Damn!

Re:Too Early?

[frizzantik]

You spit a third of the world's sperm onto your macbook?

Re:Too Early?

[weeboo0104]

That would definately make "Peter the Great" a double-entendre.

Re:Too Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

or learn to read.

Re:Too Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

You spit nearly a third of the world's sperm onto your macbook? Figures it would be a macbook.

Re:Too Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

World's Sperm... spit... macbook

I don't see any Freudisms in that. Nope... not at all.

Re:Too Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could just learn to read..

Re:Too Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

hey everyone, look at bughunter, HE HAS A MACBOOK

Re:Too Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

The first time I read your comment early this morning I thought.. you almost spit WHAT all over your MacBook???

CAPTCHA - injected. I'll bet it was.

Re:Too Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

the problem lies not in our headline, my friend, but in your mind.

EXCLUSIVE: This is the next Google project!

[Noryungi]

Somewhere in Moscow, a geek named Oleg Nikolaenko is hunched over a pile of computers in a dank and dark basement.

Suddenly, a knock on the door!

Cautiously, Oleg watches through the door peephole at a tall, muscular stranger, with shades on, dressed all in black leather, except for a "Google" patch on the left side of his jacket.

The stranger (with a strong Austrian accent): "Oleg Nikolaenko?"

Several days later, at a Google HQ conference in Mountain View:

- "Yes, our motto is, and still remains: 'Do not be Evil'... We made an exception this one time, but the project nicknamed 'Extreme Prejudice (beta)' has been officially disbanded and the blueprints destroyed. The persons responsible for the projects have been sacked. Any questions?"

- "Yes, Mr Brin, what is the *other* project Google wanted to discuss?"

- "Well, we are pleased to announce that the new Google Map now incorporates 'Satellite Friend Tracking' to know -- in real time -- where all your friends are, anywhere in the world!"

Re:EXCLUSIVE: This is the next Google project!

[Anonymous Coward]

Kill yourself. Suck-start a howitzer.

Re:EXCLUSIVE: This is the next Google project!

[Anonymous Coward]

- "Well, we are pleased to announce that the new Google Map now incorporates 'Satellite Friend Tracking' to know -- in real time -- where all your friends are, anywhere in the world!"

Ahem:

www.google.com/latitude

Wow, spam worse than murder!

[Shivetya]

Amazing on how some people view the world. Apparently if you interfere with their lives or fun its OK to make jokes about killing the person who causes it.

Were any lives lost? Human or animal? So how is this so adversely affecting you or others that it should cost this man his life.

Look, we have people fight every day to keep monsters alive, serial killers and rapist who have proven their lack of value, are given more accordance than the homeless. Something is very wrong in society when monsters are more important than victims and when punishment has little bearing on the crime

Re:Wow, spam worse than murder!

[e3m4n]

in some countries the punishment for stealing is to cut off ones hand. I suppose removing several fingers with a cigar cutter would be on par with this level of rationalization. Of course some youtube videos of him becoming some cellmates bitch could be a really good deterrent for the next would-be spammer out there. Not only would he/she be risking the same fate, but all their friends seeing them prison raped on youtube would be the salt in the wound for sure.

As for murders and rapist, I say dump them on a sparsely vegetated island with no indigenous life and tell them they eat what they kill. Cheaper on the tax payer that way.

Re:Wow, spam worse than murder!

[osgeek]

How many billions and billions of dollars does spam cost in terms of hardware, bandwidth, and human effort?
How much does the opportunity cost of these billions of dollars hurt the world in terms of more productive progress?
How many financial lives are ruined through scams, trojans, and viruses that enter people's computers through spam?

This guy was likely responsible for ruining many lives.

Having dealt with an assortment of people dealing with emotional loss, whether because of molestation, rape, or financial ruin - I can tell you that it's all the same. The perpetrator of these crimes took perfectly good lives and damaged them, possibly destroying many.

By sitting on the sidelines and poo-pooing the true devastation that spam causes, you're complicit in society's failure to deal properly with its worst enemies.

Re:Wow, spam worse than murder!

[Mitchell314]

Yeah, but then you come back to them later and then they're all "g'day mate." Do you really want that to happen again? :P

Re:Wow, spam worse than murder!

[bball99]

ROFLMAO!

tks, it made my day!

What do they do with the botnet?

[abcjared]

Do they take it down? Confiscate it for the governments use?

one guy?

[X10]

How come this guy is not in jail yet?

Re:one guy?

[Relayman]

He is. The submitter and the original story missed that part...

In soviet Russia...

[Etriaph]

...spam sends you.

Re:In soviet Russia...

[Tukz]

...to jail.

Re:In soviet Russia...

[arndawg]

On slashdot.....soviet russia was never funny.

Re:In soviet Russia...

[Brad Mace]

You've been on the site that long and you still think that's funny?

Ah, nice BULLSHITTING

[SmallFurryCreature]

The brazillian was NOT a tourist, he was an illegal alien who ran from the police trying to make an arrest. But I suppose "criminal fleeing from armed police and failing to respond to a stop order gets shot" isn't in line with your bleeding heart.

And since you are a bleeding heart who twist the truth to suite his agenda I will from now on assume that everything you say is twisted and a lie.

Just what the world needs, an advocate for truth who lies. That will get people to see things differently.

Re:Ah, nice BULLSHITTING

[Gordonjcp]

he was an illegal alien who ran from the police trying to make an arrest

He wasn't an illegal alien, and the CCTV footage released of the incident shows he wasn't running, or wearing a big bulky jacket. NEXT!

Re:Ah, nice BULLSHITTING

[locofungus]

The brazillian was NOT a tourist, he was an illegal alien who ran from the police trying to make an arrest. But I suppose "criminal fleeing from armed police and failing to respond to a stop order gets shot" isn't in line with your bleeding heart.

"Fleeing from armed police" means "sitting on a tube train"
"Illegal alien" means "Was here legally"

I'm amazed you didn't also mention
"jumped over barriers" means "stopped to pick up a metro on the way into the station"
"Wearing heavy clothing" means "wearing a denim jacket"

You really were taken in by the police lies weren't you.

And it's so convenient that the CCTV in the tube train just happened to stop working when this happens which allowed all these lies to be promulgated.

Tim.

Re:Ah, nice BULLSHITTING

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to mention that he was shot in the head...several times...while not resisting arrest

Re:Ah, nice BULLSHITTING

[Anonymous Coward]

He wasn't an illegal alien

According to the Home Office, he arrived in Britain on 13 March 2002, on a six-month visitor's visa. After its expiry, he applied to stay on as a student, and was granted permission to remain until 30 June 2003. The Home Office said it had no record of any further correspondence, but added: "We have seen a copy of Mr Menezes' passport, containing a stamp apparently giving him indefinite leave to remain in the UK. On investigation, this stamp was not one that was in use by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate on the date given."
- Wiki

CCTV footage released of the incident shows he wasn't running

It was later indicated by the leaked IPCC documents that Menezes may have run across the platform to get a seat on the train, and did not know at the time that he was being watched or pursued.
- Wiki

[not] wearing a big bulky jacket.

Correct.
Menezes was wearing a pair of jeans and a light denim jacket.

Then again,
Mark Whitby, a witness to the shooting, told Reuters that he observed Menezes wearing a large winter coat, which "looked out of place".
Anthony Larkin, another eyewitness, told the BBC that Menezes appeared to be wearing a "bomb belt with wires coming out."
- Wiki

Re:Ah, nice BULLSHITTING

[spacefiddle]

Then again,
Mark Whitby, a witness to the shooting, told Reuters that he observed Menezes wearing a large winter coat, which "looked out of place".
Anthony Larkin, another eyewitness, told the BBC that Menezes appeared to be wearing a "bomb belt with wires coming out."
- Wiki

Unfortunately, we need to remember just how unreliable passer-by eyewitnesses really are; and the ability of your average citizen to suddenly "remember" exciting details about events, when told that those events may be been important, dangerous or controversial.

Re:Ah, nice BULLSHITTING

[VoiceInTheDesert]

Clearly his mistake. Being an illegal alien makes it OK to get shot in the head. Especially if he was resisting arrest...oh wait.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Leaked_documents_reveal_killed_Brazilian_was_not_acting_suspiciously

Oops

Re:Ah, nice BULLSHITTING

[Anonymous Coward]

And since you are a bleeding heart who twist the truth to suite his agenda I will from now on assume that everything you say is twisted and a lie.

Just what the world needs, an advocate for truth who lies. That will get people to see things differently.

That's the richest, most deliciously ironic thing I've ever read considering the 'facts' you've presented. You won't find any strong evidence that De Menezes was even aware of the police until they boarded the train and shot him (after being restrained, when it would be obvious he was not a threat and did not have a bomb under his denim jacket). Your write-up reads like a right-wing parody, but your repeated use of 'bleeding heart' leads me to believe you're not joking.

The fact that it took a leak to get to the heart of the actual events surrounding the shooting should speak volumes in the context of all that is happening at the moment with WikiLeaks. Eventually, one hopes, the truth will out, if not for the corrupt and their useful idiots (you, in this case).

Re:Ah, nice BULLSHITTING

[Anonymous Coward]

we need to remember just how unreliable passer-by eyewitnesses really are;

Undoubtedly, but one person's "light denim jacket" may look big and bulky to someone else; then there's also different angles or poses (like having your hands in the front pockets; or how sitting down can compress a jacket, causing it to look much bulkier).

And for officers being told "matches the description of a bomber" and "shoot bombers in the head to avoid detonating stuff" it can make things very difficult, especially when you've only got a split second to act.

I've not followed the case enough to know all the details, but the post I replied to was definitely off.

Re:Ah, nice BULLSHITTING

[Anonymous Coward]

Criminal is probably your father. Or your mother. Or both. And you. Your entire family. Now, go fuck yourself. Please.

Re:Ah, nice BULLSHITTING

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh those people who dare show empathy, they must be liberals or, gasp, "bleeding hearts"! If only we could all be as level-headed and down to earth as you. By the way, police don't have a right to shoot to kill just because you ran away unless they have reason to believe someone's life is in immediate danger (e.g. they just saw you stab someone or pull a gun on someone).

Re:Ah, nice BULLSHITTING

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought you blokes were supposed to have an unarmed police force.

Re:Ah, nice BULLSHITTING

[Cedric Tsui]

Wait. Hold on a second.
The police are not allowed to shoot a criminal because he is resisting arrest or fleeing a scene. They are only allowed to shoot someone if they are posing a threat to someone.

At least, that's how I presume gun use by police works. That's how it work in Canada. In fact, since there was a polish man who died after being shot with a taser, the same rules now apply to them.

Re:Ah, nice BULLSHITTING

[onefriedrice]

But I suppose "criminal fleeing from armed police and failing to respond to a stop order gets shot" isn't in line with your bleeding heart.

I've never heard of this story before, but police shot a man who was otherwise posing no threat to anyone else, just because he was fleeing? That doesn't sound very nice to me. Those cops would be suspended immediately and facing prosecution if they were in America. But, like I said, I've never heard of the story. Hopefully this is not what happened.

Re:Ah, nice BULLSHITTING

[Trinn]

This is actually rarely the case, in the US at least its the cop's word against anyone else's and people still generally tend to believe the person in uniform (jury trial) or side subtly with other authority figures (judge only trial), and so even when we have footage from numerous cell phones of what happened, police still rarely get more than a temporary suspension for murder.

I'd also be surprised if it was as good as it sounds up in canada, at least in parts of the country, considering the recent police state in Toronto during the summits. They did everything they could to make peaceful protest impossible and to arrest anyone who was involved, right up to and including passing a law that went into effect *before* its manditory announcement time, and would be quickly found illegal itself anyway once it did become public, so that they could arrest people and charge them with this to keep them out of the way. Of course all the cases got dropped unless they could provoke more charges, but that didn't matter, they got their control for the most part.

Why can't we take action?

[J. L. Tympanum]

With all the talent lying aroung here, why can't we just take unilateral action to attack this guy and his botnet? Can it be that hard to track them down and hack them to pieces?

("hack" in the computer sense, not the Texas sense)

Re:Why can't we take action?

[darkgumby]

As a native Texan I think both types of hacking are appropriate.

Re:Why can't we take action?

[LordLimecat]

If you have a way around all the jurisdictional issues of "hacking" infected computers across states, countries, and continents, please do tell. Then we can deal with the issue of "how do we properly remove rootkits and viruses from 500,000 computers, when there is no 100% effective method of disinfecting 1".

Re:Why can't we take action?

[J. L. Tympanum]

Obviously it has to be done "underground", i.e., outside the reach of any jurisdiction. As for the lack of a 100% effective method - that's not necessary. It would be sufficient to (a) disrupt Oleg Nikolaenko's machinery, and (b) disable 90% (or any significant fraction) of the botnet. Extra points if (b) can be done while leaving the functionality of the machines innocent victims which have been recruited into the botnet intact.

Re:Why can't we take action?

[Neil Boekend]

With all the talent lying aroung here, why can't we just take unilateral action to attack this guy and his botnet?

Most of us pretend to be hackers/lawyers/sentient. The actual talent here may be below zero.

Re:Why can't we take action?

[sloth jr]

Easy way to fix it is to use the botnet itself.

Is it true?

[NetServices]

I don't know if I believe this. If they can honestly believe that to be true why hasn't he been stopped?

FBI versus Spamhaus

[damn_registrars]

I don't see this guy listed on the spamhaus top 10 spammers list. We know that if he was arrested in the past week his spam volume would not have decreased that dramatically that quickly; so why does the US government disagree with the magnitude of this guy's role?

Fuck The Feel-Good Response

[damn_registrars]

And by that I mean don't kill this guy. No matter how much it might stoke your ego and make you feel righteous, it is the wrong thing to do. Not only would the punishment be orders of magnitude worse than the crime, it wouldn't accomplish anything anyways.

We all read about spam gangs and botnets regularly. We know that no one person is worth crap to the spam community; even if the 10 most prolific spammers were killed this afternoon the volume would not change appreciably - hell there is an argument that could be made that such an action would actually increase spam volume as people from the next tier would start jockeying for power.

Indeed, no amount of violence or government action (or violent government action) will do anything to the spam problem. If you want to stop spam, you need to attack the motivating force behind the spam - and I'll give you a clue, spam isn't sent off just to piss you off (no matter how much you may want to believe to the contrary).

So take a moment, put down your weapons, and listen. Think about why this guy does what he does. If you can change that, then he won't want to do what he's done anymore.

Re:Fuck The Feel-Good Response

[russotto]

We all read about spam gangs and botnets regularly. We know that no one person is worth crap to the spam community; even if the 10 most prolific spammers were killed this afternoon the volume would not change appreciably -

Really? Has the experiment been tried? Of course, it would be best to do this with a proper control. Each day for a month we'll either kill the top 10 remaining spammers, or just 10 people at random, with proper blinding. Then we'll measure the spam volume. At the end of the month, we'll have our answer. If spam volume dropped appreciably on days where actual spammers were killed, we'll continue killing spammers. If not, we'll do it your violence-is-not-the-answer way.

(personally the only drawback I see to this is the random people. But, eh, some sacrifices must be made for science...Hey, who are you... is that a gun........

NO CARRIER

Luckily precedent is available.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

One of the lesser-known sections of the code of Hammurabi reads "If a man shall falsely promise p3n1s 3xt3nsion and thereby cause public nuisance and distress, his own penis shall be stretched by one digit for each such false promise. If he spreads his false promises by means of another man's messenger, he shall be flogged."

They often skip this one in elementary history lessons on the matter; but it is arguably quite salient in today's interconnected world...

Re:Luckily precedent is available.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

To any students using the internet rather than a library to do their homework: I am lying in order to score "funny" mods. Also, "a guy who calls himself fuzzyfuzzyfungus told me" is not an acceptable citation format in any version of the MLA handbook.

PSA Ends.

Re:Luckily precedent is available.

[Mitchell314]

You mean "1223518, fuzzyfuzzyfungus. \"Luckily Precedent is available\", Slashdot, 2nd ed. 3/12/10."

Re:Luckily precedent is available.

[Tynin]

Just when I thought I was about finished with my paper on "How Hammurabi's code relates to today's modern p3n1s 3xt3nsion system", you insensitive clod!

Re:Luckily precedent is available.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Not to worry, there's a section on what happens "If a man lies about or defames This Code in the service of a crude penis joke"...

Re:Luckily precedent is available.

[Renaissance 2K]

...his own penis shall be stretched by one digit for each such false promise.

For a false promise? Had I known that, I wouldn't have responded to this spam advertising the same thing for $49.95/bottle.

Shoot him in the face.

[LoudMusic]

Shoot him in the face.

No!

Build a contraption in which he is placed that requires him to read spam email out loud continuously lest it begin doing evil things to his person.

Then when he's read all the spam shoot him in the face. Don't bother getting the gun ready.

misread as...

[Anonymous Coward]

A Third of World's Sperm From One Russian Man...

Re:misread as...

[palegray.net]

Slashdot titles are frequently fertile grounds for seeding jokes.

Outsourcing everything

[dkleinsc]

It used to be that spam kingpins like Alan Ralsky were based right here in the good old USA. Now it seems we're contracting out even our criminal behavior!

in soviet russia....

[inerlogic]

DAMNIT PEGGY!!

non-emergency mass-alert/notification system!

[mikeru22]

amazing...well at least now we can confiscate his equipment and use it as a non-emergency mass-alert/notification system!

Re:non-emergency mass-alert/notification system!

[ThePhish]

Congratulations, you want to seize control of your own computer, to send non-emergency mass-alerts ... to yourself.

update your antivirus when you read this.

Re:non-emergency mass-alert/notification system!

[mikeru22]

Well putting it that way, you make it sound like a bad thing.

so ?

[Tom]

So what are we waiting for? Someone shoot him.

Oh, I forgot. We live in an age where the general public is not something that anyone stands up for anymore. Our politicians are all bought, we ourselves are too lazy and scared, and most of what we have in NGOs has become a political quagmire of commercialized selling of "feel good".

Sending the same amount of traffic to an individual company would result in charges for a DOS attack, no questions asked. But no, as long as you have enough victims and only minor damage to each, nobody really cares very much.

Re:so ?

[Yosho]

We live in an age where the general public is not something that anyone stands up for anymore.

No, we live in an age where vigilante justice and violent overreactions are not the accepted solutions to problems. If you had bothered to read the article you would know that this guy has been arrested and convicted, courtesy of the justice system.

Re:so ?

[palegray.net]

If you had bothered to pay closer attention to the article, you would know that you're wrong.

Oleg Nikolaenko of Moscow, also know by his online nickname “Docent”, is thought to be the man behind the “Mega-D” bot network of 500,000 infected computers ... Atkinson, along with another spammer Jody Smith, were last year sentenced to prison terms for computer related offenses. Atkinson also later admitted to using Nikolaenko.

The article does not say Nikolaenko has been convicted of anything yet.

Re:so ?

[dargaud]

That one man be able to send out so much spam by controlling a large botnet, I can understand. What i don't understand, is how does he find customers who want to advertise through him ?!? Does he have a website with "Sign up here to spam the entire planet 10^6 times over with you p3n1s ads" ?!?

Re:so ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that shooting him is a bit excessive. I would prefer that he serve a prison sentence equal to the amount of time spent by others dealing with the spam for which he is responsible.

Re:so ?

[Tom]

What i don't understand, is how does he find customers who want to advertise through him ?!?

Well, what do you think? Never received a spam mail that advertised a spam business? Spam is advertised through spam, simple as that. If you're sitting on your very own marketing channel, why would you not use it?

Re:so ?

[Tom]

No, we live in an age where vigilante justice and violent overreactions are not the accepted solutions to problems.

Age or not, vigilante justice appears whenever the public justice system fails. And it is failing with regards to large-scale distributed crimes, whether it be spam, copyright extortion, copyright infringement or sub-prime credit fraud.

Re:so ?

[InsurrctionConsltant]

The irony of this comment is that it advocates abandoning precisely those checks and balances do protect the general public –namely the consistent and open practice of law, the right to a fair trial, and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

Will he be punished?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes the US authorities will never pursue this guy as hard as they are trying to with Julian Assange.
I think that if anyone of us (Slashdotters or other sysadmin type people) met this guy in the street and knew who he was, would not think twice about punching him as hard as possible in the face, repeatedly.
People such as this guy really need to be made aware of the problems that they cause. While I'm not advocating violence towards this man, I do feel that the current laws really do not make it easy for the adequate punishment that we feel that he deserves.

you're approaching this

[nimbius]

from the wrong side, once again. The FBI would have done better had they simply concluded that 1/3rd of the worlds spam comes from computers running unpatched and compromised Microsoft Windows operating systems and programs. Capitalism prevails again, and we dont blame corporations at fault for the mistakes and problems we see.

this is somewhat like saying 1/3rd of all funeral coffins come from one man who designed a flyer especially for people who smoke cigarettes.

all this russian gent has done is set to make a profit off our own stupidity.

Re:you're approaching this

[cobrausn]

What took you so long? I had to scroll through numerous posts before seeing the obligatory M$ blame. I almost forgot I was on slashdot.

Re:you're approaching this

[terminalhype]

After skimming through the majority of comments it seemed odd that no one noticed the absence of investigations into the tools that were used by the Russian spammer.

I couldn't help but wonder why the authorities don't seem concerned about the origins of the malware that infected all those Windows machines in the first place, nor seemed interested in those who originally sold control of those herds of zombied Windows-bots to the Russian spammer.

A long stay in a Russian jail seems appropriate for the spammer, but it should also be appropriate for the others contributing to the crime.
   

How do you say owned in Russian?

[wytten]

OWNED!

In related news...

[bagofbeans]

The FBI believes that one third of the western world's news articles are being generated by one 79-year-old Australian-born American man. Rupert Murdoch is being blamed for...

The way things actually go in MOCKBA...

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere in Moscow, a geek named Oleg Nikolaenko is hunched over a pile of computers in a dank and dark basement , coicidentally located in the ministry of interior.

Suddenly, a knock on the door!

Cautiously, Oleg remotely check's who the fuck came unannounced and sees a tall, muscular stranger, with shades on, dressed all in black leather, except for a "Google" patch on the left side of his jacket.

The stranger (with a strong Austrian accent): "Oleg Nikolaenko?"

Oleg Nikolaenko glances up at the other FSB agents around him and watches them interrupt their daily operations briefing to get rid of the nuisance.

5 minutes, and a hearty laugh late things go on as before.

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the other two thirds from Nigerian princesses?

Observe that his name anagrams to ...

[J. L. Tympanum]

Lego. Not sure if that is significant.

only way when dealing with sociopaths

[Anonymous Coward]

shoot him in the base of his skull with large caliber firearm. People like that has no regard for others, just themselves and they're utterly indifferent to what effect their action has on others. There's no cure for that kind of mental illness. Just put them down and save the world a lot of trouble down the line.

Flamebait rate me more

[Shivetya]

because the hatred expressed by some of my fellow poster is disgusting.

Sorry, you guys need to get a grip.

People here are equating spamming with murder and rape. The mere suggestion is revolting. The punishments suggested in this thread in no way are justified by his crime.

Whats next, jaywalking in front of a Prius warrants your loss of life? Drive a hummer, become someone's bitch in jail?

I understand some make the suggestions in jest but from some of the responses I am not so sure.

It says a lot about the hatred in others when posts stating that such ideas are hate and beyond reason are moderated as flamebait.

Too bad you guys can't get the same amount of feeling for subjects that really matter.

Calling the kettle black apparently hit a nerve, well good.

REAL SOVIET DAMAGE

[Icegryphon]

Spambot increase your destruction of weak capitalist regime.

Eventually you will do REAL SOVIET DAMAGE

Wouldn't it just be easier

[turkeyfish]

for everyone spammed to donate one penny to bribe the head of his electrical company to pull the plug on his apartment?

Awww

[ThatsNotPudding]

I was expecting some Guild of Calamitous Intent action in this scene.

What is spam?

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched my personal email to GMail years ago and switched my company's emails to "Google App for domains". My emails are publicly accessible on the Internet and if I get one spam message per day it is a lot.

Is spam really still an issue?

Are there *any* GMail user for who spam is an issue?

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe it

Re:Outsourcing everything - exactly so.

[Anonymous Coward]

The FibBIes need to get a clue. The spam is being sent by the master of the botnet, not generated by him.

Most of the dollars end up in Boca Raton, Florida, USA, or San Milpitas, California. The money gets laundered through St. Petersburg, Russia.

If he tries to sing, the Russian guy will be found with a bullet in the back of his head.

Moar dust on this hurr book.

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice how OP claimed to have spit at this "my macbook." Clearly the form of "my" this or that is trying to strawman blame the Raven of Odin's MyCrowsoft; the spitting serpent in the Tree is from somewhere in the middle-east like Iran or Cupertino. Turrist to Murika, and Eve?

Also interesting: the need to point out that it was "my macbook" and not "my laptop" or "my keyboard".

Genesis 3:14-16;
"And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."

Is it surprising a male (assumption) macbook user had sperm on the mind? ;)

I never see their crap. How? Block spammer domains

[Anonymous Coward]

What blocks off known bogus sites/servers or entire hostnames/domains better than anything (because it's not a program, and because it's just a filter that operates @ the IP Stack level, and covers ALL your webbound programs, plus mine at least gets updated from reputable & reliable sources, daily): a custom HOSTS file.

You've also already got one, whether you all know it or not, & it's just a matter of either downloading a prebuilt on (sources are below), or filling one in yourself, and yes, they work even vs. spam mail (& better than adblock does, because that only covers browsers it's designed for (maybe 1-3 of them), but not external HTML + script based external email programs, like Outlook Express/FULL Outlook)).

15++ ADVANTAGES OF HOSTS FILES OVER DNS SERVERS &/or ADBLOCK:

1.) Adblock blocks ads in only 1 browser family (Disclaimer: Opera now has an AdBlock addon (now that Opera has addons above widgets), but I am not certain the same people make it as they do for FF...).

2.) HOSTS files are useable for all these purposes because they are present on all Operating Systems that have a BSD based IP stack (even ANDROID) and do adblocking for ANY webbrowser, email program, etc. (any webbound program).

3.) Adblock doesn't protect email programs external to FF, Hosts files do.

4.) Adblock won't get you to your favorite sites if a DNS server goes down or is DNS-poisoned, hosts will (this leads to points 4-7 next below).

5.) Adblock doesn't allow you to hardcode in your favorite websites into it so you don't make DNS server calls and so you can avoid tracking by DNS request logs, hosts do (DNS servers are also being abused by the Chinese lately and by the Kaminsky flaw -> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/082908-kaminsky-flaw-prompts-dns-server.html for years now). Hosts protect against those problems via hardcodes of your fav sites (you should verify against the TLD that does nothing but cache IPAddress-to-domainname/hostname resolutions via PINGS &/or WHOIS though, regularly, so you have the correct IP & it's current)).

6.) HOSTS files protect you vs. DNS-poisoning &/or the Kaminsky flaw in DNS servers, and allow you to get to sites reliably vs. things like the Chinese are doing to DNS -> http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/11/29/1755230/Chinese-DNS-Tampering-a-Real-Threat-To-Outsiders

7.) AdBlock doesn't let you block out known bad sites or servers that are known to be maliciously scripted, hosts can and many reputable lists for this exist:

GOOD INFORMATION ON MALWARE BEHAVIOR LISTING BOTNET C&C SERVERS + MORE (AS WELL AS REMOVAL LISTS FOR HOSTS):

http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/
http://www.malware.com.br/lists.shtml
http://www.stopbadware.org/
http://blog.fireeye.com/
http://mtc.sri.com/
http://news.netcraft.com/
http://www.shadowserver.org/

REGULARLY UPDATED HOSTS FILES SITES (reputable/reliable sources):

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
http://hostsfile.org/hosts.html
http://hostsfile.mine.nu/downloads/
http://hosts-file.net/?s=Download
https://zeustracker.abuse.ch/monitor.php?filter=online
Spyb

meh

[smisle]

so actually, a 1/3 of the world's spam is sent out from 500,000 people who are running windows?